In Memorium: LouA Meat and Dairy Industries Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

NOTE from All-Creatures.org: When VINE Sanctuary learned that Green
Mountain College was planning to retire Bill and Lou, their two "working
oxen," the sanctuary offered to give the two a wonderful retirement for as
long as they lived. After many weeks of media attention to save them,
unfortunately Lou was "euthanized" in the dead of night. As of November 25,
Bill is still alive...alone without his lifelong partner.]

Lou: Who
never knew how it feels to be free

Each of the five of us here at VINE Sanctuary had our own reaction to the
death of Lou. Sad, mad, numb—each of us felt each of these and other
feelings, in different proportions and accompanied by different thoughts.

Today, on the two-week anniversary of Lou’s death, we decided to share
our personal thoughts and feelings here, knowing that many of Lou’s
supporters around the world may still be experiencing their own emotional
reactions. Each of us has written something different, in our own voices.

From the first day that we saw you, we were struck by
your quiet peace. Contentedly grazing and enjoying the beautiful fall day
both you and Bill were beautiful and majestic.

We remember thinking that you knew something was
different. Perhaps it was the way that everyone related to you, or maybe it
was just the general sense that you had, but all was not perfect in your
world. Cheryl saw the swelling in your leg and wished for the chance to try
to make it better, just so that you could be more comfortable. We was glad
to watch Bill keep a protective eye on you.

That last time we were able to visit, we were
thankful that you allowed us to share your space– to sit and talk, to hear
you sigh as you laid down, and to feel your warm breath. The topic of
conversation didn’t matter, it was just simply being there.

More than anything, we are glad that we had the
chance the so many others did not: to kiss your nose and tell you goodbye.
Farewell my friend, you were loved by so many.

Lou is dead now. I see his death in an endless loop
in my head; I feel the fear and confusion he must have felt when he realized
he was being murdered; I perceive the terror that was inserted into his body
by those who killed him. It’s called empathy, and I have it for him as well
as all of the other cows who are murdered for whatever baseless reason
humans contrive. That kind of empathy leads to a kind of grief and anger
that can be hard to handle. But certainly no harder than what the animals
have to bear.

Personally, I do not believe Lou was euthanized.
However, whether he was slaughtered or euthanized, he was still murdered –
and his death is a direct result of human supremacy.

Other folks refer to this dynamic as speciesism or
human exceptionalism, but the idea is pretty much the same regardless of the
name you give it. This is the belief that humans are superior to all other
forms of life on this planet, and, as such, are not just allowed, but
virtually honor-bound, to do with others as we will.

While some of us recognize this destructive
phenomenon for what it is, and seek to correct it, happy meat “farmers” deny
they’re human supremacists. They like to say they honor and respect all of
life while they trample upon it. Because they can’t bear to give up those
tasty little morsels of flesh in their mouths – or because they can’t bear
to find another job – these “farmers” talk a good talk about holding to a
level of environmentalism that exceeds everyone else’s. They claim to love
life on the one hand while they bring it to an end on the other. They
profess that there exists such a thing as humane murder.

In short, they’re liars. They lie to themselves and
they lie to everyone else.

In contrast, when we were located on the lower
Eastern Shore of Maryland, we encountered factory “farmers” all the time.
Perdue holds sway there – it was founded about 20 miles from where we had
our sanctuary – and so chicken houses weigh heavy and numerous on the
landscape. We learned a lot in our ten years down there, including one thing
that, to me, is perhaps the most valuable lesson of all. Because most of
these chicken “farmers” whole-heartedly believe in the supremacy of humans,
they don’t have to play any mental tricks on themselves. They know it’s all
right to “process” 20,000 or more chickens every six weeks, largely because
it means a paycheck for them, and they will be happy to tell you that right
to your face.

For them, it’s not about moral righteousness or
seemingly deep ethical deliberations, because it doesn’t HAVE to be about
these things. They’re honest enough to own their desires, and so they don’t
have to create elaborate mental mazes to contain them. They want a paycheck
– they want to grill something out in their backyards and it ain’t tofu –
and they don’t give a shit about the environment or global climate change or
sustainability.

They want what they want, and they’re honest about
it.

I’m not excusing or justifying their actions. I’m
simply pointing out the difference. Factory “farmers” tend to be more honest
about their motivations for doing the things they do than happy meat
“farmers,” even though they all do the same thing: use and murder animals.

Because they are lying to themselves, these small
producers need to include you in that same lie. They need you to believe
that you’re doing something good. You are righteous, you are smart, you are
helping the environment. You are better than those (poor, unethical, working
class) people who eat factory farmed flesh. You are actively helping the
planet by eating flesh, eggs and milk from small-scale animal “production.”

They tell you these things and they need you to
believe them. But they are lies.

Perhaps you have begun to confront this notion that
humans must put tasty morsels of flesh in their mouths in order to survive.
Perhaps you have begun to suspect that humans should not reign supreme on
this planet after all. Perhaps we should actually share this planet with
everyone else, you might be thinking. Perhaps we need to rethink our
dominance, in every regard, and back off the numerous ways we tromp on
others. Perhaps there is part of you who agrees that humans haven’t done
such a bang-up job of things. Perhaps you wonder if other creatures might
like to live their lives without undue influence from members of the human
species.

Perhaps. If there is even a shred of a doubt in your
mind telling you that you don’t deserve to live as if the whole planet
exists for your own pleasure, then ethically, you need to think seriously
about switching to a plant-based diet.

If you regard the struggle to save the lives of Bill
and Lou from a NON human supremacist perspective, then what you see is a
struggle to save the lives of two people. Not property. Not objects. People
who don’t happen to be human. People who are two of billions of other
people, all of whom are murdered every year to satisfy human desire. People
who know it doesn’t matter if they’re murdered in an AWA-approved
slaughterhouse or a regular-old killing factory, because dead is dead.

Bill and Lou are people who would prefer to live –
and live unencumbered by human desires. Too bad one’s gone already. Can we
save the other?

On the weekend Lou was killed, I was attending a
conference at Wesleyan University entitled “Finding a Niche for ALL
Animals.” Sponsored by Wesleyan Animal Studies; the College of the
Environment; the Ethics in Society Project; the Feminist, Gender, and
Sexuality Studies Program; the Center for the Study of Public Life; and the
Philosophy Department at Wesleyan University as well as the Animals &
Society Institute and Feminists for Animal Rights, the conference brought
together scholars and activists to honor and carry forward the ecofeminist
ideas of friend-of-the-sanctuary Marti Kheel, who died last year.

I spoke on the “Feminist Ethics of Care” panel, and
sanctuary Board of Directors member lauren Ornelas described the work of the
Food Empowerment Project on the panel about “Contextual Moral Veganism.”
Throughout the conference, discussion was lively and thoughtful. The mood
was upbeat even though we were mourning Marti’s death and confronting
emotionally wrenching topics.

Lou, all weekend, people kept asking me about you.

Lou, so many people tried so sincerely to stop those
other people from killing you.

I arrived back at the Sanctuary on Sunday, enthused
and energized by the experience. Seeing my face, Aram knew:

“You didn’t get the news?”

Oh, Lou. Nobody but Bill knew you.

Those people who said they loved you and then voted
to slit your throat, they knew only what you–schooled by the whip never to
express yourself too forcefully–allowed them to see.

Some of the same people who yoked and worked you also
petted and cooed over you. I’m sure you did appreciate the scratches and
treats. But you always knew: Step out of line and they might hit you. (They
waved the whip regularly, just to remind you.)

And you always knew: What you wanted didn’t really
matter to them—elsewise, why would they lock you into that contraption and
make you walk along lines they drew, dragging heavy loads? Years of forced
docility squashed your unique personality. I’d hoped you could come here to
the sanctuary and that, over time, you would relax enough to be yourself,
whoever that might have been.

Now nobody but Bill will ever know you.

No matter how much we wish they could, the dead can’t
hear us singing their praises, saying how much we’ll miss them, or bemoaning
the manner of their deaths. Memorials, then, are for the mourners.

So, let me address myself to the thousands who
advocated for Lou and who may be feeling any number of emotions right now.
Mother Jones (sadly, no relation) famously said, “don’t mourn—organize.”
That’s pretty good advice except for the fact that suppressed feelings can
get in the way of effective activism. So, I say, “mourn—and mobilize.” As we
learned in the midst of the late 80s and early 90s, when people mourning
friends or partners or their own likely-to-be-too-short lives poured their
grief and rage into nonviolent direct action against AIDS, emotions can be
extremely effective motors of activism if they are channeled rather than
squelched.

So, let’s take whatever we feel about the death of
Lou and use those emotions to motivate us to look out for all the Bills and
all the Lous on all of the factory farms and family farms. And let’s look
out for Bill himself, literally. We can’t ever know Lou, but we can be
fairly sure that the one thing he would want us to do is make sure that
nobody hurts his Bill.

Fair Use Notice: This document, and others on our web site, may contain copyrighted
material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owners.
We believe that this not-for-profit, educational use on the Web constitutes a fair use
of the copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law).
If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use,
you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.